Since the Louisiana school system began, last year, a voucher program that allows students to go to private schools on the public’s dime, reports have trickled out over questionable schools that qualified for the system.

With a lack of oversight, it seemed, children were being taught creationism and other debunked or wholly wrong ideas. Mother Jones uncovered that children were learning that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth together, that the KKK did helpful community organizing, and that dragons were real.

But the latest example takes on perhaps the most overtly political stance. In a textbook obtained by Americablog, children are taught about hippies:

They went to Canada or European countries to escape being drafted into military service.

Many young people turned to drugs and immoral lifestyles’ these youths became known as hippies. They went without bathing, wore dirty, ragged, unconventional clothing, and deliberately broke all codes of politeness or manners. Rock music played an important part in the hippie movement and had great influence over the hippies. Many of the rock musicians they followed belonged to Eastern religious cults or practiced Satan worship.

The book also includes this helpful picture of “the hippies”:

In December of 2012, a Louisiana state court declared the voucher program unconstitutional because it used public money to fund private enterprises. That decision is in the process of appeal by the state.

Personally, I couldn't help focusing on the following, rather than on the stuff about hippies:

"God used the Trail of Tears to bring many Indians to Christ"

"Africa needs religion: Africa is a continent with many needs. It is still in need of the gospel…Only about ten percent of Africans can read and write. In some areas the mission schools have been shut down by Communists who have taken over the government."—Old World History and Geography in Christian Perspective, 3rd ed., A Beka Book, 2004"

"Slave masters were nice guys"

"The KKK was A-OK"

Wow. While I'm not American, I can't help but wonder how it can be legal to teach such things, even in a privately funded school. Doesn't this constitute hate speech? (Especially in the context of a classroom...)

Just what I expected from Governor Dipshit. People in Louisiana still seriously see an exorcist who hasn't had a balanced budget in his entire period in office as a serious proponent of fiscal conservatism, which he really isn't. One-term money every single year is not fiscal conservatism. Rushing this 'reform' through in what was a very unconstitutional means was in the same track, and what it illustrates is the same damn problem: Jindal doesn't know what he's doing and is fucking over my state in the process so he can be either RNC chairman or POTUS.

I missed the bit about the KKK and the slaveowners. You know what? Fuck every pseudo-Southern asshole who still clings to the decaying zombie of that pseudo-state from 150 years ago. The South needs to move on and to build a New South that accepts that black Southerners are human beings and that their possessing equal rights in all definitions of that phrase to white Southerners is not an entitlement, it's their constitutional God-Given rights in these United States. Fuck that bullshit and the horse it rode in on.

oh my god, I think these were the same books my "school" used in high school. (fun fact: I literally learned nothing beyond the ability to cheat the tests when I was too depressed to do any of the work or anything, really. because my depression was satanic and could have been cured by an exorcism, not drugs!! The more u know)

Even if they aren't uhh - a lot of far right christian curriculum are really, really out of date. Like, still talking about Civil Rights as a "big new thing" and segregating the white students and the black students in separate ~but totally equal~ schools out of date. I wish I was joking when I said that. I'm not. :/ I wish I had kept some of the books, they were really ridiculous and horrible and hilarious in a trainwrecky sort of way.

God it's really sad but most of the people I went to school with aren't gonna be able to go to college, even a ~Christian college~, because we got less of an education and more of an indoctrination. Plus our teachers would fudge our grades so we could move on from the hard stuff, if we couldn't get it or the they had trouble teaching it. They also focused intensely on memorization as the key to education.... us students memorized data that, once we moved past that part of the curriculum, was lost completely to us. There wasn't even any focus on what we learned in previous books, once we moved past stuff we never read about it again. D:

For the first time ever I am grateful for No Child Left Behind. If this:

Many young people turned to drugs and immoral lifestyles’ these youths became known as hippies.

is an example of the level of writing the children of Louisiana are about to be reading and learning to emulate I doubt they'll be able to pass the reading section of the tests, much less any science section that may be implemented. Only if it's citizens are willing to pony up the big bucks will Louisiana be able to afford vouchers for schools that teach this type of curriculum once the students start failing the standardized tests and their federal funding shrivels.

And frankly, I would do everything in my power to move away from an area if this was the level of education it's future doctors, nurses, pharmacists, engineers, educators, lawyers, etc. were receiving.